The “Internet of Things” (IoT) is a rapidly emerging paradigm that, among other things, introduces new types of Internet endpoints. In the IoT world, even a tiny device with limited processing capabilities, little battery power, a small memory and limited networking and service capabilities can become an endpoint. These tiny devices may spend most of their lifetimes in hibernation mode. Such low power IoT devices may be assigned a wide range of tasks such as sensing different elements or factors in their immediate surroundings. If costs are kept low they can be deployed in large numbers and cover vast geographic areas. Such devices are also proposed for use in automation and entertainment application in office and factory environments, among others.
Moreover, using Internet protocols, these tiny devices can be expected to discover and self-configure key networking parameters that would grant them membership in a specific area and enable them to answer queries sent by local and remote devices at any time. In some scenarios, the number of responses can significantly increase which in turn, may increase the burden on the routing infrastructure. This routing infrastructure may also be made of power constrained devices.
In order to reduce power and processing demands on this new class of tiny devices, a 6LoWPAN (Internet Protocol v6 over Low Power Wireless Persona Area Networks, IEEE 802.15.4) working group of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) is introducing optimizations to IPv6 neighbor discovery protocols. The optimizations include addressing mechanisms and duplicate address detection stateless compression protocols and other advancements. The resulting developments can be used not only for very low power devices but also for any device for which the reduction of air time, power consumption, or processing resources is valued.